Sapphire Technology, a primary add-in graphics card partner of graphics chip designer ATI Technologies, has started to sell graphics cards based on the RADEON X800 SE graphics processor, the “weakest link” in ATI’s RADEON X800-series of graphics processors, confirming the reports about retail availability of the X800 SE products.

ATI RADEON X800 SE is the third graphics product in ATI RADEON X800 lineup unveiled in early May. According to Dell, who so far has been the only supplier of such graphics cards, the product has a 425MHz graphics processor, 128MB of 800MHz DDR SDRAM memory with 256-bit bus width along with typical set of connectors, such as D-Sub, DVI-I and TV-Out. It is generally believed that the RADEON X800 SE graphics chip has 8 pixel pipelines and 6 vertex processors. By contrast, ATI RADEON X800 PRO and ATI RADEON X800 XT visual processing units sport 12 and 16 pixel pipelines respectively, delivering greater performance in the majority of cases.

The RADEON X800 SE for AGP market is likely to offer performance higher than that of the RADEON 9800 XT, but lower compared to the RADEON X800 PRO. PCI Express x16 flavours of the RADEON X800 SE product are likely to compete with ATI RADEON X800 XT. In case the speed estimations are correct, when available in retail widely, the product might put quite some pressure on sales of NVIDIA’s GeForce 6800 graphics offering at the same price-point. However, it is not clear at the moment whether the RADEON X800 SE will be available widely.

Akiba PC Hotline reports about RADEON X800 SE graphics cards for AGP 8x platforms from Sapphire available in Tokyo, Japan for about $365, which is just $34 lower than the recommended retail price of the RADEON X800 PRO for the USA. Typically prices in Tokyo, Japan are higher compared to those in the rest of the world.

Sapphire’s RADEON X800 SE graphics cards have D-Sub, DVI-I and TV-Out connectors and are supplied in OEM packaging with no bundle.